Tobias Winters (original character)
Character History Beginnings in London. Tobias Winters has had an unusual upbringing. His parents are both teachers. His father teaches at a comprehensive school in London and his mother secretly home schools mutant children whose appearance or abilities prevents them from attending regular schools. It is almost impossible to understand his frequently contradictory personality without knowing this. Tobias’ paternal family hail from Aughrim, a small village just outside Galway in Ireland. His father and Aunt Morgan came to Britain, to study teaching and train as a social worker respectively. Tobias’ father and mother were introduced by their fellow university student Diana Sottomayor, now a teacher at Xavier’s. She remains a friend of the family and was around enough while Tobias and Holly were growing up that they consider her a cross between an aunt and an older sister. Tobias’ parents brought him up on English and Irish myths and folk songs. They were thrilled to find he had inherited his mother’s musical talents with the harp and singing. After his mother started the school, she was forced to homeschool both Tobias and later his sister until he turned 11, to avoid the risk that they would inadvertently expose the school. As a result Tobias grew up among mutants, despite not being one himself, considering them his friends and playmates. He was forced to spend his high school career hiding this massive secret from the other students, and was thus something of a loner and social outcast. As a result he disliked high school, despite his high grades. Blown away. His mutant powers manifested at age 17 when he sneezed and blew the doors off his parent’s garage. Since his powers were completely out of control, Tobias fled to a nearby park where the Professor found him. In the short term to reduce the danger Tobias posed to people and property, the Professor placed a mental block on his powers. Once this was done Tobias initially wanted to stay, to help his parents, but they persuaded him to attend Xavier’s. Finding footing at Xavier’s. After an initial bit of homesickness, Tobias has thrived at Xavier’s. His strength and control over his powers have increased dramatically. More importantly he’s been enjoying making friends and not having so many secrets. He’s also in a relationship with Juliet Wilford, and both of them are very much in love. Tobias has been accepted at NYU to study Social Work. At the start of his second year Tobias was selected as a mentor for the New Mutants training squad, and has been very successful in this role. Tobias has been involved in a number of the strange incidents that make up life at the Xavier Institute, such as accompanying Diana Sottomayor to Avalon and defeating a ‘dream vampire’ which had taken his appearance and was preying on the Institute’s inhabitants. Post Purifier-attack. During the Purifier attack on the mansion Tobias helped a number of students get to the safety of the Danger Room, and was injured in the incident which led to the death of fellow squad mentor Ryan Hurlock. Immediately after this he was forced to return home to help his family and some of their mutant students flee to Muir Island after the school his mother ran was exposed as being for mutants. There he had a terrible argument with his parents, who were afraid to let him return to Xavier’s after the attack, leading them to tell him that if he went back then he shouldn’t come home. Tobias left anyway, effectively disowning himself. No-one at Xavier’s knows of this yet, apart from Professor Xavier. Tobias has also changed his major to librarianship, and with Professor Xavier's encouragement has removed the block on his powers, greatly increasing their scope and power. As a result of this power growth the Professor has changed Tobias' codename to Zephyr (meaning a gentle northerly breeze). The year so far has seen Tobias become godfather to best friend Lisabeth Tanner’s daughter Grace, and recover from injuries sustained during a disagreement with Piotr Rasputin which left him with a fractured spine. Powers and Abilities Aerokinesis Tobias’ mutation is referred to as aerokinesis. This means he is able to create and control wind currents with just the power of his mind. He’s a tremendously flexible aerokinetic, and while he doesn’t have the raw power of someone like Storm or Wind Dancer, his ability to create multiple effects at once more than make up for it. Tobias can fly with extraordinary maneuverability, lift and move objects using wind currents (although he doesn’t have much fine control with this power) and create miniature whirlwinds and blasts of compressed air to attack opponents. He also has the signature power of creating air shields. Tobias has learned how to create a shield of air as a form of protection, deflecting the force of powerful physical attacks and stopping smaller ones completely. This is a very effective defense against physical attacks and moderately effective against energy attacks. It also makes an excellent cushion for landing on. He’s learned how to create these at range, to protect others, since coming to Xavier’s. However since they are based on control of the air he ‘feels’ impacts on them. This means that a sufficiently powerful attack will not only breach the shield but will harm him (assuming it’s not his personal shield). Tobias’ control of air also gives him an extra-sensory ability to sense the flow of air in his surrounding area, giving him a precise ‘picture’ of things even when senses like sight cannot function. This is an active ability which affects 180 degrees in front of Tobias. It does however have some drawbacks. Firstly it is a form of radar, not sight and as such can’t detect things like what color an object is, or even potentially what an object is (e.g. Tobias would be able to tell the difference between a canvas wall and a stone wall but potentially not between a metal wall and a stone one; all he’d be able to tell was that there was a dense object). Secondly, due to how new this ability is, Tobias finds that using it causes mild nausea, similar to motion sickness (this will likely be reduced or eliminated as he gets more used to using this ability). Special Skills Brown belt in mixed martial arts (MMA), some basic investigative training, speaks Irish and Spanish fluently and German conversationally. Weaknesses When using his powers Tobias involuntarily increases the oxygen content of the air. This means that fires become stronger around him and makes his shields worse than useless against fire (they actually feed the fire oxygen, strengthening it). He also suffers from a range of effects common to many element-controlling mutants, namely; if he pushes his powers too hard he can injure himself and he must concentrate to keep his powers running, so disruption to his concentration can cause them to stop working temporarily. He also can’t affect broad areas with his powers, in the manner that Storm or Wind Dancer can (the largest area that he’s ever affected at once with his powers was around 30 square feet). Finally, while Tobias has developed impressive enough control over his powers to maintain several different effects at once (i.e. to lift several separate objects or maintain several separate wind shields), this reduces the strength of the individual effects. Personality Gentle Tobias doesn’t have much in the way of a competitive nature or ‘killer instinct’. He’s displayed this during the Purifier attack where he tried to stop Ryan Hurlock from killing Purifiers in cold blood, and during a danger room training session where he was reluctant to attack Lochlan Wyeth (even though it was only with sponge balls). Generous Tobias is very generous with friends and acquaintances alike (offering to babysit for Ava Madison Belle and Lisabeth Tanner on numerous occasions and sharing class lecture notes with Erika Schuster for example). Shy Tobias is typically quite reluctant to divulge personal information to people that he doesn’t know well (a fairly typical example being his conversation with Erika Schuster at NYU). He’s also quite quiet and awkward in most social interchanges, although with family and friends he’s much more relaxed. Romantic Tobias is an incurable romantic, however much he might try to deny it. This denial is made much harder by things like ensuring that his girlfriend gets a birthday party even when she’d forgotten it was her birthday and bringing flowers. Relationships Juliet Wilford Juliet Wilford is Tobias’ girlfriend, and first love. Despite their relatively old age both Tobias and Juliet are each other’s ‘firsts’ (first kiss, first proper relationship and first love). The two of them have been together for two years and have weathered a great many obstacles, some the sort that any couple might have to face and some entirely unique to life as a mutant. Lizabeth Tanner Lizabeth is Tobias’ closest friend at the Xavier Institute in the whole world. The two of them are close due to the fact that they both find the other easy to talk to about just about anything. Tobias is also god-father to Lizabeth’s daughter Grace. Holly Delaney Tobias gets on well with his younger sister Holly, despite their age difference and wildly different personalities. Their relationship has recently suffered from a degree of tension, due to the fact that Tobias sees it as his job to look out for his younger sister, and she sees this as him interfering in her life and trying to replace their parents. Despite this the two siblings are still on good terms usually. Trivia Tobias is a very cautious driver. Lizabeth Tanner has been heard to joke that he drives like her grandmother. (Tobias has been heard to mutter that Lizabeth drives like his grandmother, the one with the cataracts.) Quotes ”You were suggesting that I was treating Grace with disrespect. So what would you call committing murder in her name? She was one of the gentlest, sweetest people I have ever met and she would have been horrified to see what you just did. That was cold-blooded murder; he could not even have seen it coming. So if I have to defend these vermin to stop you from dishonoring her memory, I’ll do it.” (XI-3, Baseball Courts. 07/25/09) “Hi sweetie, I’m Toby. And the beautiful woman over there, who your little eyes probably aren’t up to seeing, is Julie.” (XI-4, Solarium. 01/17/10)